The Convenient Absence of Quality

Vinnaithandi Varuvaya, a film by Gautham Vasudev Menon, is being hailed as a work of "class" in The Hindu by an ostensibly reputed reviewer. Karan Johar's My Name is Khan received 5 out of 5 stars in the Times of India.

What stands out is that both are mediocre films but have been released in an ocean of trash, making the ordinary seem exaggeratedly noteworthy. Thankfully, some of us have reference points that are wider than the collection of movies infesting our A city theatres at this given time, we are exposed to better fare than the reviewers that reputed newspapers seem to be able to get these days, and we can continue to have our honest opinions about mediocrity that comes packed in glitz - from pictures to pizza, literature to music. We don't have to be fooled. But "we" are in the minority and getting smaller.

This is the age of the salesperson, the consummate professional who can lie through her teeth, in complete ignorance or in complete shamelessness, and make it sound like a million bucks. There is a whole generation of consumers out there who can't tell the difference, and even worse, don't want to make the effort to see the difference. All they know is trash. But they can tell glitzy trash from dull trash. The marketing machine is here to add glitz to anything we want to sell, so if you can afford the glitz, you can produce trash and absolutely hope to get away with it.

An extended vaccuum in quality can actually lower standards, push down expectations, and finally result in a worse quality of life. Reviewers can be bought by the dozen today, a few crores of money spent in bending opinions doesn't seem to be money badly spent. Every advantage is to be had commercially by dumbing us down, homogenizing our viewpoints, and reducing the average level of knowledge and questioning of what we see, hear and are willing to be sold. The number one sellable after sex is "Freedom"! As soon as we're ready to measure our freedom in what we can afford to buy, we are suckers by the million. And we're being had royally.

Look at the number of times AR Rahman has done something ostensibly "patriotic" and it is easy to see why some wise men have opined that patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels. Even a lousily rendered "Vande Mataram" cannot be questioned for quality, because it is about something that is supposedly above reproach - his patriotism! Holy cow, YOUR patriotism! It is just like our inability to tell a lousy singer in a temple to stop torturing our devotion with the snarling effort of religious hysteria. We don't have a smoking chance against the power of stupidity, noise, and overwhelming ignorance. Patriotism takes advantage of all of these. All reason can be drowned by anything patriotic, especially if it sounds like an iceberg humping a mountain full of tin boxes.

India is headed towards a quality oblivion, quite simply because we are becoming a culture of reducing effort. We want to strive less, ignore more and be blissfully happy. The traps are all here - we truly belong in our own illusion of a great country when we obey, and only when we obey the machine that tells us so. After all, when all of your friends tell you My Name is Khan is a great movie, isn't it just cool to go along? Maybe they are right! Of course, this line of thinking is easy when you know only as much as they do, and all of you collectively know very little anyway. Our mob mentality is geared perfectly for dumbing down. Win over a part of the mob, and the whole mob will be yours! This is how the British took over the whole country! In any case, we're proud to belong to the Indian mob waving the same flag that some other rather original people held aloft not that long ago.

Access to information has not translated to access to knowledge as far as India is concerned. Our youngsters live in a deluge of information, dished out by other youngsters working for mindless media outlets that man the stations sending out SMS messages, advertisements, promotions, and a whole host of hideous, tasteless, unchallenged overtures of nonsense, juvenile sexuality, and sheer lies. We are also sold this constant message that India is on the "march forward" and our young clowns need only hear that they are as good as any in the world! It is a turnout of gargantuan amounts of ignorance.

We have the USA to look up to, for any reference we need on the level of dumbing down we are happy to subscribe to. If something is good enough for the Americans, we're okay with reaching anywhere near that. Why else would Vinnaithandi Varuvaya have whites and blacks dancing together behind our hero? This is our director not wanting to be politically inferior to any American film maker, as if anybody would notice this fool's film in a world panorama! But still Gautham Menon wouldn't want to hurt Tarantino's feelings, would he?! This disease is so deep rooted, he wouldn't even know if it was pointed out to him.

Coming from the new age Indian upper middle class family is the bane of all originality - it is not encouraged at all. Parents who have "set up" their children for the future have no chance of producing any offspring that are capable of any truly original thought processes. Protection from all the insecurities of life can only lead to dead emotional intelligence. That is where most of our mediocre crap comes from. But then, that is where the reviewers of that crap come from as well - get a good school education, get a good college education, get a half decent hold of your English language presentation, and guess what!? YOU decide what everybody like you should be watching! The market is full of fools like you, so who can question your abject ignorance?! When we're adding forty million people to our middle class each year, and are being taken aim at as one of the most reliable "growth" markets, we are ripe for this sort of dumbing down.

We have enough arrogance to think this sheer game of numbers actually gives us a right to feel powerful in some way. We are, but we are not empowered. We're simply "available" to dumbing down and being sold stuff to. The easiest thing to sell to us is the absolute right to be lazy, in thought and action, or thought and inaction! Everything is justified since we have collectively registered some undeniable "progress" on some global scale. But how have we grown when we have managed to put agriculture out of whack as a self sustaining industry, but are happy that we can call Dominos Pizza any time of the week in any Indian city? Dominos isn't even the best pizza we can make for half the money we pay those monkeys, and the lunatics they hire to deliver their crap ride their bikes on the wrong side of the street! What investment would the franchise owner make in the quality of work they put in, as long as they can ring their numbers in. This is India for us. And we're proud of this?

It is HARD to build a quality country, so we're doing what we know very well - build a quantity country. It is all about quantity. From our population to the measure of accomplishment. 99% of the money we have made through software development for the computer industry is about slave labour - doing other people's grunge work. Our creative content industry is busy making copies of movies made by other film makers in other countries - and not high concept action films either, but family drama! This is supposed to be our strength, our family system and our values and what not., but we don't have one thing any more - sincerity! We don't have a quest for truth that is at the core of all art! We are liars and thieves and crooks in the world of art and we won't be coming out any time soon, especially in cinema.

The absence of quality is pronounced and upon us, but it is not going to go away anytime soon. No producer is going to bet his balls or his money on a film that asks us to be intelligent, sophisticated, or even remotely thoughtful. We all have no chance but to actively contribute to more dumbing down. After all, when stupidity is conveniently available to everyone and it can be sold and made money from, why shouldn't we celebrate the convenient absence of quality!?

Nationalism Misplaced

The nationalists are out in force, demanding a safer India, a stronger India, a more accountable India. The attacks in Mumbai have turned on a fervour that hasn't yet subsided. India is suddenly inflamed and angry, and want results. Our politicians are fair game, and a few heads have already rolled.

But what are our nationalists achieving now that they couldn't have fought for before a bunch of no good, gun toting terrorist pigs decided to attack Mumbai's soft targets? Surprise, surprise! By bringing out their patriotic emotions to the fore, they have given the terrorists exactly the satisfaction they would love to have - the feeling that they are fighting against an entire nation!

Imagine being part of a group that trains to kill and maim, destroy and burn - all in remote hiding places, under the tutelage of shadowy characters with no intellect to understand anything more than violence, and then suddenly being promoted to receive the attention of the world, and the reward of fighting againt a powerful "nation"! That should be a real high in their low lives. What is worse, it will induce them into a delusion of being equal to the task of fighting a nation, and spur them to greater and more spectacular attacks on an enemy that everybody knows is way too powerful, but now seems eligible for attack.

Why nationalist sentiments come out in the wake of a terrorist attack is beyond me. Attack on India? Please! These are rogues and freak murderers on the loose, causing mayhem. Should these elements really call for anything in reaction that is nationalistic? Do they deserve that exalted emotion in reaction to their ugly schemes? I don't think so, and I don't think our fashionable nationalists who woke up in Mumbai and other cities quite realize how many things there are to fight for that will actually make our lives better and make our nation progress faster.

The reason is - this kind of incident is simple enough for a lot of people to come out of their indifferent existences, and easy enough to collect groups to go let off some steam and have some impassioned conversations. The incidents we have on a daily basis that are highly anti-national like bribery, extortion, corruption, pollution, rank incompetence, rape, and murder are definitely more within touching distance of the common Indian and most certainly within the powers of politicians to fix, but these aren't "sexy" enough for our nationalists. We want bombs, fire, media attention, foreigners talking of support, comparisons to other events worldwide - spectacle! Without these, our nationalism is confined to accepting status quo as "normal". The truth is bribery, extortion, corruption, pollution, rank incompetence, rape and murder aren't bloody normal either, but they happen often enough that we have accepted them as such.

The monotony in statements that come out of Mumbai's residents in massive numbers is numbing. Everybody wants to stand united, everybody thinks this is not just an attack on Mumbai, and everybody thinks our politicians are responsible. We all know our politicians have never been responsible. The rest of the world has sung the same tune, that they must stand shoulder to shoulder with India in this hour of crisis. So, we stand shoulder to shoulder and do what? Watch over the dead bodies? Give the terrorists more to cheer about?

The worst insult to Mother India was Sanjay Dutt on TV saying he was angry! Isn't this the son of a thrice born b&^%h who bought weapons from the underworld? And now, suddenly he is a nationalist? I am all for reformation, and I am proud of this rank idiot for shedding some of his stupidity over the years, but has he earned the right to talk for a nation? Come on, India. Surely we can do better than this.

How about the crisis of character that we have all been marinated in? From the fools who ignore no smoking signs, to the politician who sneers and sniggers when cornered with a straight question, from the trader who demands a price well above maximum retail price to the teacher who doesn't know his subject, we know we have failed as a nation and are decaying on the inside faster than we are shining on the outside. Do we really need a tea company telling us to wake up and vote, when we should be lynching the rascals we voted for the last time who haven't delivered anything they were supposed to?

We have been dumbed down, and we are loving it. We are coccooned in the constant barrage of hype and commercialism that tells us we are doing great when we are not. Being sensitive about our country is not a good substitute for being ignorant and indifferent about what we should be doing as citizens. We are being led like sheep by the "system" that allows a few people to take advantage of weaknesses, loopholes, and distractions, all leading to enormous gain, while the welfare of the nation is systematically destroyed.

The "bulletproof" vests supplied to the men in uniform at the Chatrapati Shivaji Station allowed bullets to pass through them. That is how some of our "heroes" died. Further investigation on dummies with the same vests ended up with smashed dummies - categorically showing that these vests did not do the job they were supposed to! Shouldn't this be big on TV? What a symbolic example of how India has been let down for many, many years and exploited and raped and pillaged by our own selfish people. This won't make news because we don't have the conscience to think of this as being important or sexy enough to be nationalistic.

On the ground, the reality is that we have a failure on many fronts. We were not a great nation to start with and we are not getting there in a hurry. A great nation has people who do their duty as citizens, on all fronts, at all times, not just people who wake up when politically attractive. A great nation does not put up with mediocre performance. A great nation has conscientious people, with a highly developed sense of duty and compassion. We do not have any of the above, and most Indians I know would never put the cause of the nation above a cause of personal betterment. A great nation would never have bowed to the will of hijackers and turned over prisoners to secure the release of an aeroplane and its passengers. India did. So, what the bloody hell are we suddenly so nationalistic about? It really took a bunch of terrorists to wake us up? We should be ashamed of that very fact.

Against all greatness

Knowing fully well that The Hindu is a better paper, what makes some of us reach for The Times of India? When both papers are right in front of us, all things considered, The Hindu should never have to compete with The Times of India. Yet, there is a place for sub standard, mediocre, and absolutely crappy product in every sphere! How do we let this happen, even when there are no financial ramifications involved?

How do we voluntarily choose to watch song and dance programmes on television, when it is on plain view that neither is the talent on display so breathtaking, nor is the format of the programme all that exciting? Quite simply, we have a great amount of space reserved for the mindless, for the easy access "fun" experience, which can take us from one moment to another, without having to tax our minds. This can be therapeutic once in a while, but when we put up with sub standard all the time, we are on a slippery slope.

Visit the Madras Boat Club and you will find fairly elite people enjoying dinner on the lawn at the back, facing the river. If you were smelling impaired, you'd have the greatest time, but whatever is wrong with these morons that they would completely ignore the stench of the river which is nothing but sewage?! It is unbearable and most sane people would run from that stink, but for the members of the MBC, no problem! That's the amazing part - it is as if it is normal to pay a lot of money to experience dinner with the huge stench of sewage all around!

There was a question in the Indian media asking where our Obama was. A bit of a stretch, perhaps, considering Senator Obama is yet unproven, but the signs of a visionary leader are there. The signs of greatness are there without doubt. So, if there is an Obama amongst us in India, we have to kill him early, and nothing succeeds like India stifling any and all attempts at greatness, no matter who it is putting the effort. We love to pull everyone down to the average, below standard level, so that we can all be in a level playing field. India is one of the few countries that still genuinely believes in making it as hard as possible to be great. Collectively, we hate it when someone forces us to set higher standards for ourselves.

A few weeks ago, I called 139 to find the status of my train, and got an automated voice telling me it was on time. I went to the station on time and found the train was a hundred minutes late. I was furious, for what is the point of having this automated system if I cannot get accurate information? A hundred minutes of my time is valuable, but more than that, the lousy maintenance of the system is no excuse for stealing a hundred minutes of my time! I duly filled out a complaint, in triplicate as the Railways have it, and got a sympathetic railway official who gave me another local number to call to get "reliable" information! This is the problem I have with India - we never seem to make intent and action meet.

We celebrate chaos and we love being out of order. It is all great if this order we are fighting against is one of extreme regimen, and we are losing our minds and our freedom, but completely to the contrary, we do have a lot of freedom! We have so much freedom in this country that we don't have to perform up to snuff in anything we do. The few of us who choose to be great at what we do, have to do whatever it is that we do in complete insulation from everybody else, because we don't encourage any attempt at being great at anything, unless it is close to bringing a windfall bonus!

Even the educated amongst us eat at unhygienic places, do not demand basic sanitary standards out of our all encompassing logic that there is no point, and almost consider it unfashionable to take action against the ever ready low minded unthinking mediocrity worshipper that can and will affect our lives negatively. The bus that plays a movie way too loudly absolutely beckons us to walk up to the driver and tell him to put down the volume. In extreme cases, I have had to cut the wire to the speaker directly above me, and damn the loss in entertainment value the other deaf passengers have to endure! Sometimes, we have to be militant about keeping our sanity. The truth is, you pay for a bus ride, not for the noise, and you bloody well have a right to a peaceful journey.

The Indian government machinery is famous for recruiting low minds, and absolute morons. When there is a quota system designed to infuse the system with underperforming idiots, who won't be fired if they don't perform, this is to be expected. But on our side of the coin, we have every right to demand that they perform. The right to complain is something we should not have to think twice about, but given that we put up with a mediocre system, there is absolutely no need for us to be stuck with the faults of idiots who can stall our normal conduct of life. The Right to Information is a great right, but only when exercised.

At all levels when you demand information that is not forthcoming, you are bound to meet an attempt to intimidate you, either through a low mind government servant that throws attitude or ignores you until you make it unbearable. And then, your decency will come under question, with the underlying hope that somehow you will not be willing to let go of a little dignity, and will therefore "behave" when you don't get the service you deserve. Sloths who work for the government think it is their birthright to not perform, and act as if you are acting way above your authority when you ask them to simply do their jobs. Why do we put up with fools like this? Because we love them!

We in India have this enormous empathy for the underperforming sloth, unless he is a cricketer. That is the one uniform that carries a lot of responsibility. The cricketer must be an all conquering, intense, positive, world class performer with attitude to boot! Everybody else is allowed to graze on the plateau of collective pathos. Why is it that we demand so little for ourselves when it isn't hard to do so? Do we love so much to be backward? Or is it our discomfort with the pursuit of greatness because it demands that we get off our lazy butts and become active?

Fact remains that we love to belong in some kind of greatness, as long as we don't have to work for it. Our five thousand year old heritage is the biggest culprit in breeding this lethargy in us. Who can take that away from us? Nobody, and that is the problem! What work does it take for us to lay claim to having one of the greatest civilizations in our ancestry? Nothing! What joy! But, what are we willing to do to make India work better today? What can we do to make our lives better? Forget the patriotism and nationalist nonsense - it isn't worth the sweat. It is worth the sweat to have our system work properly, atleast for most essential part. Let's forget about the thousands of years of our forefathers' legacy that is supposed to be all bathed in glory. That is part of this land, not part of our lives, our nation or our realities today.

What India is today is a herd. A herd of mindless, selfish, uncaring, unspiritual individuals who don't really care about anything remotely reaching greatness. We have no place for original thought, no tolerance for brilliance, unless that brilliance is unstoppable and already at its pinnacle of achievement. And then, we have our cynicism towards over achievers, only too eager to find faults in individuals who have taken their passion seriously and climbed their own peaks. We are a negative lot, finding humour in failure, comfort in low thought processes. We'd rather be led than show the courage to beat our own paths. This is the reason we will be badly affected by shifting paradigms, that other people control, for good or bad.

We are happy to be defined by others, by trends, by messages that subtly alter the way we think. The Indian today is one whose character can be palpably demonstrated by the way the vehicles on our roads have become extensions of our egos. We are always one step away from becoming a mob, because we revel in our little triumphs when there is no risk to our own status quo. We are vastly available to an injection of collective stupidity. We love rumours because our lives aren't that interesting anyway. We discuss other people because our minds have a hard time discussing ideas. At best, we discuss events, because we have the time.

Aha! Time! That is the big one! We just have the time to remain stagnant - no wonder we allow stagnation. We are not in a hurry to get anywhere beyond where we are. We are sedentary but not content, inactive but unhappy. We would like to ensure as much safety as possible to be built around the coccoon of mediocrity that we have mired ourselves in. What can be better than to be unaware? Ignorance has been bliss for a long, long time. It is proven and it is tested against everything. So, we choose to be ignorant.

So, what does an Indian contribute to life on earth as humans? What goes in comes out. We swallow mediocrity by the ton, and spit it out. This shouldn't surprise anyone, for just as we don't mind corruption, we condone laziness, incompetence, and generally do whatever it takes to avoid friction. We are weighed down by our legacy, burdened by our glorious past, and we refuse to come to the present where we don't really count for much. We are the rat race. But then, we are great Indian rats! See, one of us is by Lord Ganesh himself!

Mumbai Selling

The new ad. for "Khatron Ki Khiladi" on the new channel to come - Colors (notice the missing U?), warns that all the stunts are being performed under expert supervision in South Africa according to applicable regulations (Sounding very much like the Americans who love to write "This is not a toy" on plastic bags), and extends itself, huffing and puffing, to say "Viewers shouldn't try these stunts, especially children".

Now, either that means the stunts are really child's play and even children will want to try them, or our children would really listen to their parents yelling "Pinky! Leave the helicopter alone. You really shouldn't be following Akshay! No Chotu, you can't take the speedboat either!"

Are we hapless masses in India supposed to enjoy something being performed in South Africa with an American idea? How about talking in Polish with Korean subtitles, idiots? Oh, you want this to be a Hindi show? So, why isn't the show's name ever written in Hindi? Could it be because the people who can read Hindi would never watch this show? Or could it be you couldn't really come up with another name for "Fear Factor" that isn't equally dumb?

This is supposed to impress those of us who read in English, hear in Hindi, relate to American culture, and are willing to put up with South African regulations? Why not just show us the original show if we are this international in our taste?

It takes a bevy of beauties to go on some dangerous missions with Akshay Kumar? Fair enough. Television courting titillation is nothing new, but I would rather watch no TV at all than being forced to watch these unathletic acting career dropouts trying to hitch a ride to South Africa under some idea of "cool" invented last night. And these chicks telling us who they are - why? Who cares? To me, they all look the same, sound the same, and act the same. There is a serious business opportunity for a company that can invent and sell new types of giggles. And it can be called "Giggles for Dummies".

The show promises lizards and snakes licking these desirable nubiles - are we supposed to be scared of these creatures? We are still a nation where a large number of people are bitten by snakes on a regular basis, and yet, we do have any mortal fear of the creatures. We even have seven year old girls chasing away leopards with sticks and winning bravery awards from the President. Sweep all this under the carpet while watching another Whitey show ranking snakes for how deadly they are, and you are the perfect candidate to welcome the new White invasion of our culture, this time the mindsets.

Right on the heels of this one, we have BIG BOSS! A bunch of people in a house. So? The ads make this out to be some sort of macabre, extremely menacing proposition and we are supposed to be interested in who survives the rest of the loonybins in the house? Are we supposed to wait in trepidation to see where this next experiment in social engineering will take us? Or will we be spared the end of the season and have some actress cry foul and make news for herself while the show tops every toilet in viewerland?

What kind of Mumbai morons come up with these ideas to copy shows that are boring to start with? What kind of braindead, drugged out dopes are getting paid to come up with these ideas, and what kind of mediocrity marinated lunatic bosses okay these ideas?

We as Indians, have a long tradition of notions, as long as our history itself. These notions are complex and sophisticated, and we have never cared to explain or analyze any of these, because... we don't really care! It takes a lot to dumb us down, and while we might buy into a bit of dumbness once in a while, Mumbai trying to sell us the whole whale is out of the question.

Bottomline - we are not American, and none of the doped out foreign culture sucking assholes in Mumbai, from the uncreative bowels of their below mediocre television culture needs to tell us what we should like and what is cool. We're already cool and we don't really care about that either.

Which one of those dickheads is running Star TV in India? Somebody tell that knucklehead that we don't need to be told what is coming in the "Sizzling Summer" like the Asia Cup and Wimbledon, when it is pouring cats and dogs. Maybe these people are snorting dope all day long and don't even notice that summer is long gone for the 16 percent of the world's population that is keeping one of these sports alive!

That idiot on AXN who's been pronouncing Maruti as "Muhroodee" for ages - can someone other than the RSS tell this fool to get names right(especially those of Hindu Gods!), before letting his voice travel over the airwaves? I really wouldn't mind slitting the throat of the fool who approved this idiot's work, just for the incompetence it shows, or the indifference to Indian viewers who are being subjected to this nonsense.

It isn't as if a foreign culture has never made it to the shores of India. For thousand of years, we have been bombarded by things foreign. But this new phenomenon, of Indians telling other Indians how we must ape others, is new. And it is being fostered in Mumbai, squarely.

It neither begins nor ends with this arbid fiction film world called Bollywood (oh, what a coincidence it has taken to this name with love!). It spreads rather unceremoniously to news channels as well. The 11th of July bombings in Mumbai were shamelessly referred to as the "Seven Eleven" bombings, just so it rhymes with the white man's violent castration of sorts caused on "Nine eleven". When in India did we ever use the month before the day in mentioning a date?

I have heard we have monkeys in Hyderabad, who celebrate Halloween! Halloween, for heavens' sake! What does India have to do with Halloween? One can understand Valentine's day as an opportune moment to woo someone who has already fallen for that one, but Halloween!? I can only say to those who celebrate Halloween in India - to borrow from Mumbai cinema - that they really mustn't have drunk their mother's milk!

The number of advertisements in India, especially for high end clothing, that carry white faces - yet another disgusting low. Why ever should we wear something made here because a white man is ready to wear it? And the number of corporate websites that have pictures of very unproductive but cute looking white faces will give you an idea where India really doesn't want to let go of imperialism, even if we were not the imperialists to start with.

Just so we are not perceived as being racist in our blindness, look at how many avatars Abhishek Bachchan has taken up where he wears clothes like black rappers and moves his hands like he was a tattooed, just released from jail black man expressing himself on the streets of Chicago? I wonder if he would love to get sodomized in an all black jail in the USA, just so he can boast of having "been there, done that".

It isn't as if all copies are incapable of merit and success in our own context. Kaun Banega Crorepati is a much better show than its original, impersonal American version, but it was Big B that made the wonderful warm difference. Indian Idol is indeed a good opportunity for young talent to get picked up to good futures in the entertainment industry although I wonder how many people would recognize Prashant Tamang here than they would in Nepal!

The biggest question to ask is - why doesn't Mumbai copy the best of others' work? The master film makers today, in unabashed open view and in the greatest truth of the marketplace, are mostly white and from Hollywood. India has no Clint Eastwood, no Spielberg, no Terrence Malick, and no Scorsese. Mumbai doesn't have a Leonardo DiCaprio, and we most certainly don't have a Denzel Washington. (India has a Kamal Haasan, but he doesn't work in Mumbai)

The answer is - it's hard work being good. So, if you're not willing to work hard to create something original, and if you have no cultural roots to give you a sense of who you really are, if you are willing to take little crumbs of copied semi-original material and leave it to the marketing machine to make you, then you would do well in Mumbai. But if you are one of these, keep your shit to yourself and don't unleash it on the rest of us who can still tell the difference.

There are many actors and actor wannabes in Mumbai who can swear by the amazing actors Hollywood produces. Great actors come from great material. No screenwriters since the days of Salim-Javed have produced tight screenplays in commercial Mumbai. We will forgive the exceptions like Govind Nihalani for now. There simply is no respect for great writing, and indeed no demand for it. Some of the scripts that get approved for production have absolutely no potential to be "great" in any context, except maybe as recycled paper. All that Mumbai cares about now is "packaging" and as long as that sort of "packaging" has worked in the West, it is happy to ape, rape, and expect us to gape.

Deserving mention are the actress wannabes that show up in Mumbai, dressing and making themselves up like Western women, slimming themselves down, and throwing themselves about just like the women they watch on TV. The same mannerisms, the same attitudes, and the same level of fake confidence. All good, till they come to pronounce "sandvich" or having to understand the interviewer who asks a question longer than five words. Then, in one instance, all the glam falls away, and the villager is exposed. God bless them for their dreams, but what animal are they trying to ape? White western women, of course!

Salma Hayek doesn't hide her native English accent, and no European stars really worry about their identities while having to operate in a foreign language like English. So, what is wrong with us? A really deep inferiority complex? Just hating being Indian? Both? Pathetic.

And what's up with rampantly using the Indian flag and patriotic rubbish to sell products? Do you rascals really have to be that much of a sell out? Mind and body, heart and soul, your creativy is up the pole.